Blog: McCain met with Pinochet
From the Huffington Post:
John McCain, who has harshly criticized the idea of sitting down with dictators without pre-conditions, appears to have done just that. In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile's military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world's most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.
The private meeting between McCain and dictator Pinochet has gone previously un-reported anywhere. According to a declassified U.S. Embassy cable secured by The Huffington Post, McCain described the meeting with Pinochet "as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism." McCain, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, made no public or private statements critical of the dictatorship, nor did he meet with members of the democratic opposition in Chile, as far as could be determined from a thorough check of U.S. and Chilean newspaper records and interviews with top opposition leaders.
More here.
UPDATE: The McCain campaign issued this response: "There is a huge difference between a junior Congressman meeting a dictator and a President holding unconditional summit meetings with dictators. As the cable describing the meeting recounts, Congressman McCain said meeting with Pinochet was like talking to the head of the John Birch Society. John McCain was a key Republican supporter of Chile's transition to democracy and led on numerous legislative initiatives, including securing U.S. funding for the plebiscite which ended Pinochet's rule."
the old double standard.
Posted by: fred | October 24, 2008 at 02:04 PM
The difference is that Democrats meet and oftentimes embrace ANTI-AMERICAN dictators.
If the dictator happens to be anti-communist, the Democrats berate and condemn them.
Pinochet, for all his faults, was an anti-Communist and pro-American ally during the Cold War.
Why do the Democrats always defend and associate themselves with the dictators who prefer to see America sink into the ocean?
Posted by: Cheo | October 24, 2008 at 02:20 PM
well said, Cheo.
Posted by: Londonchica | October 24, 2008 at 07:35 PM
"..for all his faults..." says Cheo.. a bit like "Hitler, for all his faults"... it's not a numbers game - a life's a life and SACRED whether it's 6 million or 3,000, and it is simply and indisputably immoral and wrong to justify not condemning a violent and bloody dictator for expediency's sake, as McCain implicitly did in the case of Pinochet by not coming out and condemning his appalling human rights violations nor publicly supporting democratic opposition.
The USA has lost moral and ethical respect internationally precisely for backing immoral dictators and trying to make them out as Good Guys simply because they will sing to the USA tune - as long as the $$$s are pouring in, a la Sadam Hussein, another one-time USA pal!
Posted by: Reg | October 25, 2008 at 04:46 AM
CIA AGENT DAVID EDGER, VETERAN OF THE COUP IN CHILE, IS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
Edger’s involvement in the coup is reported by Public Information Research, of San Antonio:
http://www.namebase.org/main1/David-N-Edger.html
Edger was brought to OU by David Boren as a "“visiting professor" and "CIA Officer in Residence" in August 2001 – not long before the 9/11 attack. There are many reasons to be suspicious about this.
Boren has deep ties to the CIA. Earlier, Edger had been director of all U.S. intelligence activities in Germany and had responsibility for surveillance over the Hamburg Al Qaeda cell, which at that time was making wire transfers of cash to Zacarias Moussoui, who was taking flight lessons in Norman in 2001 and later pled guilty to involvement in the 9/11 hijacking plot.
See this fall 2001 OU political science newsletter reporting Edger’s appointment:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021104104817/http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/atlargedeptnews.htm
For more information about Edger, go here and read the news articles about him. They are on the last row of scans on page 1:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4867&l=f909d&id=567381284
In the time since former U.S. Senator David Boren has been president, OU has become a cesspool of sleaze.
Posted by: Michael Wright | October 25, 2008 at 06:24 PM
Unbelievable. Pinochet was responsible for many, many more murders than al-Qaida. McCain had a friendly chat with this ruthless dictator and notorious torturer and spent three and a half days at the home of Pinochet's friend, fishing and horseback riding.
This isn't just meeting without preconditions. It's "palling around with a terrorist." Pinochet makes Ayers look like . . . a college professor, which is exactly what he was when Obama met him.
Posted by: DoTheMath | October 26, 2008 at 01:15 AM
Pinochet's secret police committed an act of terrorism in Washington, DC in September 1976, resulting in the death of a Chilean exile living and working here legally and a US citizen in a car bomb on Embassy Row.
Pinochet promoted the man who was head of his secret police, Manuel Contreras from colonel to general after he was indicted in the US for this crime.
By my tsandards, someone who believes in committing acts of terrorism in the US is anti-American. Not, apparently, by Cheo's standards.
Posted by: Randy Paul | October 26, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Cheo, you've got to be kidding me.
I should leave this alone. Most of the time that I see someone unilaterally blaming any party or political view without real examples, I'm listening to a zealot. But in this case I can't let this one pass.
Augusto Pinochet was responsible for the military takeover of Chile in 1973. It saw the transition, bloodily, of a democracy into the worst dictatorship Chile had ever known. Outlawing almost all opposition parties, killing and/or permanently "disappearing" at least 3000 people, holding around 40,000 people in a makeshift concentration camp in the National Stadium, making torture sites (Colonia Dignidad), the list of what Pinochet did to the Chilean civilians was incredibly gruesome. And here's the best part! We helped put him in power!
That's right, in Project FUBELT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_FUBELT), we helped oust a democratically elected president and put in it's place a dictator. And then sat back and watched when all those human rights violations took place. Why? For the same reason you're extolling him now. Because he was anti-communist.
Now put that into perspective with McCain. I have no problems with presidents and other heads of state meeting with other world leaders, because otherwise diplomatic routes are no longer available. But this response that McCain's group gave that he was helping transition Chile into a democracy, is utter BS. Why in the hell wouldn't he be bragging about that sort of thing once Chile did change back into a democracy? Why wouldn't he reveal that in the middle of the many campaigns to be president he's been involved in? Why would it take declassifying information about his trip to finally bring it out into the light?
No, this is a clear cut case of hypocrisy.
Posted by: Mathieu Douglass | October 26, 2008 at 12:43 PM
How do you look for information for your blog content?
Posted by: ForexTeacher | March 28, 2009 at 08:52 AM